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EXTRACTS FROM HANSARD
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PROCEEDINGS OF CANADA'S SENATE:The following extract has been taken from Hansard Records of Canada's Senate:
Debates of the Senate (Hansard)
1st Session, 37th Parliament,
Volume 139, Issue 81
Wednesday, December 12, 2001
The Honourable Dan Hays, Speaker
Access to Census Information
Presentation of Petitions
Hon. Lorna Milne: Honourable senators, I have the honour to present 510 signatures from Canadians in the provinces of B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia who are researching their ancestry, as well as signatures from 130 people from the United States who are researching their Canadian roots. A total of 640 people are petitioning the following:
Your Petitioners call upon Parliament to take whatever steps necessary to retroactively amend the Confidentiality-Privacy clauses of Statistics Acts since 1906, to allow release to the public after a reasonable period of time, of Post 1901 Census reports starting with the 1906 Census.
Furthermore, honourable senators, I have the honour to present 121 signatures from Canada's Home Children who petition as follows:
That the Canadian government make available all post 1901 Census returns since they are the only public means available to Canadian Home Children and their descendants, who make up 10 per cent and more of our population, to access the whereabouts of their siblings and relatives from whom they have been separated by this country's tacit acceptance of a policy now recognized by the British Government as being misconceived and the cause of irreparable and irrevocable damage to the child migrants and their descendants.
These signatures now total 14,805 petitioners to the Thirty-seventh Parliament and over 6,000 petitioners to the Thirty-sixth Parliament, all calling for immediate action on this very important matter of Canadian history.
Senator Prud'homme: Hear, hear!
Question Perion
The Senate
Passage of Bill S-12
Hon. Laurier L. LaPierre: Honourable senators, my question is for the Leader of the Government in the Senate, and I am wondering if she would be so kind as to help me out.I am the chairman of the Heritage Fairs. Two-hundred-fifty thousand young people in grades four to eight participate in this project every year by creating exhibits. About 10 per cent of them do it on genealogy. They trace back their ancestry. They are humbled considerably now by the stupidity of the fact that they cannot have access to the census reports past 1901 on the grounds that Sir Wilfred Laurier supposedly made a promise that that information would never be divulged. Sir Wilfred Laurier never did make that promise.
Consequently, minister, will you help the children of this country who want to do their projects by proceeding with Bill S-12, now before the Senate, and get it done as quickly as possible so that the children of this country can know where they come from?
Hon. Sharon Carstairs (Leader of the Government): Honourable senators, I assume that the honourable senator is referring to Honourable Senator Milne's bill. As you know, it is before the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. I understand that it will be reported soon. At that point, the best I can give the honourable senator is my assurance that it will come to a fulsome debate in this chamber.
